Less is more for Romney in Iowa
By: Alexander Burns
October 21, 2011 04:32 AM EDT

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – Mitt Romney’s path to victory in Iowa has never been clearer.

Potentially formidable rivals in the first-in-the-nation caucus state — such as Tim Pawlenty and Rick Perry – have stumbled badly or dropped out of the race. A handful of social conservative opponents are dividing up the voting bloc that powered Mike Huckabee’s campaign four years ago.

And while Romney hasn’t built the battleship-sized caucus organization he had in 2008, none of his GOP challengers has, either.

It’s as if the less Romney does in Iowa, the more inviting the state becomes.

“The opportunity’s still there [for Romney] because, frankly, nobody’s got a ground game,” said former Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants, who supported Romney in 2008.

“I can’t figure out what they’re up to, because they have had a window,” Rants said of Romney’s campaign. “They could have come in three weeks ago and just knocked Perry out in Iowa. They chose not to.”

Tim Albrecht, a veteran of Romney’s last White House run who now serves as communications director for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, suggested Romney would benefit from an influx of new, economically-minded caucus-goers, as well as the disorganization of the GOP field.

“Anyone above and beyond the 118,000 who turned out last time will be looking for someone focused on fixing the economy and creating jobs. Mitt Romney will appeal to the new caucus-goers,” Albrecht said.

He continued: “It is amazing that we’re looking at November, and no campaign has announced a 99-county structure. When you organize for the caucus, announcing 99 county chairs is the first thing you check off on the list. This shows a caucus in flux.”

Even as the Iowa campaign has seemed to turn his way, Romney has continued to tread lightly here. His visit Thursday marked only his third trip to the state this year and his first since August. Romney has just five people on his Iowa payroll: His senior strategist, state director and three field staffers, along with unpaid volunteers. He hasn’t spent a dime on television or radio.

Iowa has noticed.

Asked at a Sioux City town hall meeting whether he planned to plant a flag more firmly in the state now that the caucuses are less than three months away, Romney answered carefully.

“I’d love to win Iowa. Any of us would,” he said. “You have an enormous say in who the next president’s gonna be.”

Romney’s message in Iowa was much the same message he’s delivered everywhere, focusing overwhelmingly on his business background and ideas for reviving the U.S. economy.

At several stops Thursday, Romney almost seemed to go out of his way to signal that he wasn’t trying to cater to local sympathies. At his town hall event, Romney rejected the idea of a national consumption tax – known to supporters as the “Fair Tax” – beloved by a population of activists who supported Huckabee in 2008.

He declared in staunchly conservative western Iowa that he didn’t favor a constitutional amendment banning abortion and wanted to “let the states create their own legislation with regard to life.” At a meeting with business leaders in Treynor, he repeatedly said he does not favor reviving subsidies for the ethanol industry that are scheduled to expire.

Romney has reason enough to avoid a big bet on Iowa. There is the unpleasant memory of 2008, when he finished a distant second to Huckabee despite committing significant resources to the state. He’s also so strong in other early presidential states – New Hampshire and Nevada – that he doesn’t necessarily have to win Iowa in order to be the GOP nominee. Trying too hard here and losing a second time could be embarrassing.

But Romney’s incentives here have also changed since the beginning of the campaign. Now, he has only one opponent – Perry – with the resources to mount a national primary fight. Scoring back to back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire would be the fastest way for Romney to crush the Texas governor and his longer-shot challengers and shut down the GOP nomination fight early.

Romney adviser Dave Kochel said only that the former Massachusetts governor would contest Iowa heavily “enough to able to demonstrate that he’s the right candidate on jobs and the economy.”

“He’ll be back and he is, I think, eager to come back,” Kochel said. “There’s a receptive audience for Gov. Romney’s message.”

In a state that tends to be viewed as a bastion of culturally conservative Republicans, Romney’s low-key, solutions-man campaign still resonates with a certain segment of the Republican Party. He won 25 percent of the caucus vote four years ago and polls show his support still hovers in that area.

“He’s undoubtedly, in the business world, probably the number one candidate people are looking at,” said Mick Guttau, chairman of the Treynor State Bank, where Romney held his roundtable event. Guttau added: “You know, Herman Cain has a phenomenal business background too.”

Mike Flanagan, a Sioux City financial consultant, said after Romney’s morning town hall that he’d been drawn to the former Bain executive’s “business sense” four years ago – and still is.

“I would like to see him more in Iowa. I know that he’ll have a strong finish,” said Flanagan, acknowledging: “Some people don’t think he’s conservative enough.”

Romney’s weakness on the right could be crippling in Iowa if Christian conservatives rallied behind one of his opponents – as they did with Huckabee in 2008 – or if a more conservative candidate built a voter contact and turnout machine that dwarfs Romney’s slim effort.

There’s still time for one or both of those things to happen. Multiple candidates, including Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, have made inroads among social conservative voters. If Perry recovers in the polls and opens up his $15 million war chest, he could put together a more traditional caucus effort than the race has seen so far.

But every day that passes makes Romney’s existing operation and four-year-old political base more valuable.

Former state GOP Chairman Steve Grubbs, who took over Herman Cain’s caucus effort Thursday, argued that there’s “no way Mitt Romney can be considered an underdog” in Iowa.

“I think his rope-a-dope strategy has been smart, lowering expectations while frankly I think they’ve been working very hard to organize this state,” Grubbs said. “He can play it off as a half-effort but his half-effort is pretty impressive.”

The question for Romney, said Rants, is whether anything less than an all-out, high-dollar caucus operation will be enough to match the vote share he got last time – or even do a little better and give Romney a real shot at winning.

“Do Iowans already know him well enough that they’ll support him if they like him and they won’t if they don’t?” Rants wondered. “There’s some logic to that, but that doesn’t necessarily turn people out.”

Romney’s “best-case scenario,” the former state legislator said, “is to get the voters he got four years ago. I don’t know how he eclipses that. The question is: Is that enough?”